Morgan Overton: May 2026
Morgan Overton is a multidisciplinary visual artist, advocate, and cultural strategist living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her figurative work centers Black interiority, ancestral memory, and Afrofuturism. Working across painting, drawing, and mixed media, Overton positions Black humanity as central, enduring, and essential to the imagining of collective liberation.
From 2023–2025, Overton served as the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pittsburgh’s Frederick Honors College, where she explored art as a tool for democratic preservation through exhibitions, workshops, and interdisciplinary dialogue. She has also held residencies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (Painting and Mixed Media, 2025), and the August Wilson House in Pittsburgh. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the United States Capitol (Russell Senate Building) and group exhibitions including the London Art Biennale, Helsinki (Finland), St. Paul de Vence (France), and across the United States. A sought-after thought leader in arts and culture, Overton regularly delivers artist talks and guest lectures at universities and cultural institutions, engaging audiences in dialogue around the intersections of art and social change.
Overton is the founder and owner of Morgan Overton Art Gallery in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh and has curated large-scale exhibitions at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. She holds a Master of Social Work with a focus on Community Organizing and Social Action, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Studio Art from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh’s Community ARTivist Award in 2024, and induction into the Pittsburgh Business Times 30 Under 30 in 2019.
My multidisciplinary practice centers Black interiority, ancestral memory, and Afrofuturism. Working primarily in graphite, watercolor, and mixed media, I create figurative works that merge realism with layered, ethereal environments. The grounded earthiness of graphite allows me to render intimate, humanizing portraits, while watercolor allows space for vibrance and movement. I create dreamlike, meditative compositions that hold my figures in spaces of stillness, abundance, and expansiveness where they are free to exist beyond constraint.
Based upon genealogical research, archival materials, and historical context, I reinterpret found photographs and familial narratives to reconstruct fragmented histories. My work is particularly invested in honoring the emotional and spiritual lives of Black individuals who live under systems of subjugation, yet cultivate beauty, joy, and cultural brilliance.
My works allows past, present, and future to converge, and offers alternative realities rooted in care, rest, and self-determination. Rooted in a background in psychology, social work and political advocacy, I approach art as a collective tool for healing, remembrance, and imagining more liberated futures.
Current Exhibition:
Solo Exhibition, The Land Knows Their Names: Black in Appalachia
Sweetwater Center for the Arts, 200 Broad Street, Sewickley, PA 15143
April 9 – May 28, 2026
